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RELATIONS WITH THE PHILIPPINES. 



SPEEC 



OF 



/ • 



HON. JOSEPH L. RAWLINS, 



OF UTAH, 



IN THE 



SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES, 



Monday, March 12, 1900. 



I 900. 



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SPEECH 

OF 

HON. JOSEPH L. EAWLINS, 

OF UTAH, 

In tpie Senate of the United States^ 

Monday, March IS, 1900, 
On the relations of the Government with the Philippines. 

Mr. RAWLINS said: 

Mr. President: I ask for the reading of the bill introduced by 
the Senator from Wisconsin [Mr. Spooner] and favorably re- 
ported to the Senate by the Republican majority of the Commit- 
tee on the Philippines. 

The PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Chair lays before the Sen- 
ate the bill (S. 2355) in relation to the suppression of insurrection 
in, and to the government of, the Philippine Islands, ceded by 
Spain to the United States by the treaty concluded at Paris on the 
10th day of December, 1898. The bill will be read. 

The Secretary read the bill, as follows: 

Be it enacted, etc.. That when all insurrection against the sovereignty and 
authority of the United States in the Philippine Islands, acquired from Spain 
by the treaty concluded at Paris on the 10th day of December, 1898, shall have 
been completely suppressed by the military and naval forces of the United 
States, all military, civil, and judicial powers necessary to govern the said 
islands shall, until otherwise provided by Congress, be vested in such person 
and persons, and shall be exercised in such manner, as the President of the 
United States shall direct for maintaining and protecting the inhabitants of 
said islands in the free enjoyment of their liberty, property, and religion. 

Mr. RAWLINS. Mr. President, that is but the "prologue to 
the swelling act of the imperial theme." I next ask for the read- 
ing of the joint resolution introduced by the Senator from In- 
diana [Mr. Beveridge]. 

The PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Chair lays before the Sen- 
ate the joint resolution (S, R. 53) defining the policy of the United 
States relative to the Philippine Islands. The joint resolution 
will be read. 

The Secretary read the joint resolution, as follows: 

Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United. States of 
America in Congress assembled. That the Philippine Islands are territory be- 
longing to the United States; that it is the intention of the United States to 
retain them as such and to establish and maintain such governmental con- 
trol throughout the archipelago as the situation may demand. 

Mr. RA¥/'LINS. Mr. President, as a further basis of what I 
may say, I v/ill read two paragraphs from an English author. Sir 
Sherston Baker, on international law. He saj^s, on page 60, para- 
graph 9: 

Nevertheless, in order to make such transfer- 
Referring to the transfer of territory from one nation to an- 
other — 

valid, the authority, whether de facto or de jure, must be competent to bind 
the state; hence the necessity of examining into and ascertaining the powers 
of the rulers, as the municipal constitutions of different states throw many 
difficulties in the way of alienations of their public property, and particu- 

2 4225 



Cong. Reco-d Off.^ 
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larly of tlaeir territory. Especially in modern times the consent of the gov- 
erned, express or implied, is necessary before the transfer of their allegiance 
can regularly take place. 

I next read paragraph 12, on page 61. Speaking further upon 
the same subject, this author says: 

But in modern times sales and transfers of national territory to another 
power can only he made by treaty or some solemn act of the sovereign au- 
thority of the state. And such transfers of teri-itory do not include the 
allegiance of its inhabitants without their consent, express or implied, and a 
change of sovereignty does not involve any change in the ownership of iiri- 
vate "property. The new sovereignty, however, acquires the same right of 
eminent domain as that held by the former. 

The same right only as that held by the former. 

Mr. President, I next read a iDaragraph from 1 Kent's Com- 
mentaries, on page 178. This great authority uses the following 
language under the heading of "Territories ceded or acquired:" 

With respect to the cession of places or teri'itories by a treaty of peace, 
though the treaty operates from the making of it, it is a principle of public 
law that the national character of the place agreed to be surrendered by 
treaty continues as it was under the character of the ceding coiintry until it 
be actually transferred. 

Mr. President, it has been claimed that the bill introduced by 
the distinguished Senator from Wisconsin, who is an acute and 
able lawyer, finds its warrant, at least in its operative parts, as a 
copy from the act of Congress of 1803, under which what is known 
as the Louisiana Territory was taken possession of by the United 
States. In order that w^e may see precisely to what extent that is 
true, I ask the Secretary to read in this connection the act of Octo- 
ber 31, 1803. 

The Secretary read as follows: 

Chapter T.— An act to enable the President of the United States to take pos- 
session of the territories ceded by Fi-ance to the United States by the treaty 
concluded at Paris on the 3Uth of April last, and for the temporary govern- 
ment thereof. 

Be it enacted, etc., That the President of the United States be, and he is 
hereby, authorized to take possession of and occupy the territory ceded by 
France to the United States by the treaty concluded at Paris on the 30th day 
of April last between the two nations; and that he may for that purpose, and 
in order to maintain in the said Territories the authority of the United States, 
employ any par b of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the force 
authorized by an act passed the 3d day of March last, entitled "An act direct- 
ing a detachment from the militia of the United States, and for erecting cer- 
tain arsenals," which he may deem necessary; and so much of the sum appro- 
priated by the said act as may be necessary is hereby appropriated for the 
purpose of carrying this act into effect, to be applied under the direction of 
the President of the United States. 

Sec. 3. And be it further enacted. That until the expiration of the present 
session of Congress, unless provision for the temporary government of the 
said territories be sooner made by Congress, all the military, civil, and ,]udi- 
cial powers exercised by the oflScers of the existing government of the same 
shall be vested in such person and persons, and shall be exercised in such 
manner, as the President of the United States shall direct for maintaining 
and protecting the inhabitants of Louisiana in the free enjoyment of their 
liberty, property, and religion. 
Approved October 31, 18L)3. 

Mr. RAWLINS. Mr. President, it will be perceived that that 
act, passed in 1803, was to enable the President of the United 
States to effect the transfer and receive the possession of the ter- 
ritory included within the treaty of cession between France and 
the United States; that it was to enable him to act pending the 
period of transition from the time of the making of the treaty 
until there should be a change in the national character of the 
territory ceded within the principle laid down in the authcriiies 
from Kent which I have cited. 

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That act was to remain in force by its terms only until the expi- 
ration of the session of Congress at which it was passed, if not 
sooner superseded. It was designed to operate only pending the 
transfer of possession. It was to cease to operate the moment 
the authority of the United States became established and its juris- 
diction completed by the actual transfer of possession. As a matter 
of fact, that required only from the 31st day of October, 1803, the 
date of the passage of the act, until the 1st day of October, 1804, a 
period of eleven months, when that act ceased to operate. 

An act similar in purpose, almost identical in terms, was passed 
in 1819 by Congress to subserve precisely the same purpose and to 
enable the President to consummate the change of national char- 
acter in respect to territory obtained by the cession fj-om Spain of 
Florida. That act by its terms was also limited in its operation 
until the expiration of the session of Congress at which it was 
passed. But it took longer In that case to complete the transfer of 
possession. Spain, in accordance with her usual dilatory habit, 
was reluctant to give up possession, and it required four years to 
complete the transfer. In the end it was only accomplished by 
the forcible action of a portion of our Army under the command 
of General Jackson, who was appointed as one of the persons to 
carry out the authority thus vested in the President to enter the 
territory and to take possession of it. Thereupon that act ended 
as soon as the authority and jurisdiction of the United States over 
the Territory of Florida was established. 

The Senator from Massachusetts [Mr. Lodge] affirmed that 
there had been a similar act in regard to the territory ceded by 
Mexico to the United States by the treaty of July 4, 1848, the 
treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo; but I am satisfied that the Senator, 
upon farther examination, will find that no such act was passed 
in respect to that territory. 

Now, Mr. President, the act to which I have made reference, 
the act of 1 803 ,_ differed wholly in its purpose from that which has 
been introduced, the proposed act which is now under considera- 
tion. The bill introduced by the Senator from Wisconsin [Mr. 
Spooner] provides "that when all insurrection against the sov- 
ereignty and authority of the United States in the Philippine 
Islands, acquired," etc., "shall have been completely suppressed 
by the military and naval forces of the United States " — that is, 
v*^hen the jurisdiction and authority of the United States have been 
completely established everywhere in those islands, when there 
has been accomplished the actual delivery of the possession of that 
territory, when the national character of those islands has been 
fixed under the unqualified sovereignty of the United States — then, 
and then only, is this proposed act to begin to operate. 

It will thus be seen that this act is only to take effect at that 
point when the act of 1803 and the act of 1819 were to cease to 
operate. This begins in its operation where their operation ended. 
Their operation was to continue only during the transitory period; 
this is to begin after that period is end^d and is to operate after 
the full authority of the United States has been established. 

Mr. President, the Senator from Wisconsin, I think, in framing 
this bill perceived the anomalous situation of our Government in 
respect to the Philippine Islands. As a matter of fact, those peo- 
ple in those islands have never rendered or acknowledged alle- 
giance to us. They therefore are not in rebellion in the technical 
sense of that word. To-day and during all the time past, at least 
since February 4 of last year, they have been a belligerent people, 

4225 



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fighting in self-defense against a war of subjugation waged upon 
tliem by the authority of the President of the United States, such 
war never having been directly and expressly declared by Congress. 
I take it that the main purpose of this measure is to relieve the 
situation of that anomaly. I believe its main purpose is to make 
a declaration or recognition of the existence of a state of war be- 
tween the United States and the people of the Philippine Islands, 
because this bill says: 

That when all insurrection against the sovereignty and authority of the 
United States in the Philippine Islands, acquired from Spain by the treaty 
concluded at Paris on the lObli day of December, 1898, shall have been com- 
pletely suppressed by the military and naval forces of the United States, etc. 

That is a recognition by Congress of Ihe existence of a state of 
war. It comes to us, it seems to me, in disguise, to subserve that 
purpose to relieve the Administration from that anomalous posi- 
tion in which it is now found. 

Mr. President, the bill introduced by the Senator from Wiscon- 
sin [Mr. SpoonerJ and the resolution offered by the Senator from 
Indiana [Mr. Beveridge] constitute, as I understand it, the pro- 
gramme of the Republican party and of the Administration. 
There have been two notable speeches delivered in the Senate in 
support of the policy thus outlined. One of those speeches was 
delivered by the Senator from Indiana [Mr. Beveridge] , and the 
other was delivered last week by the junior Senator from Massa- 
chusetts [Mr. Lodge] . Those two speeches were elaborate and 
carefully prepared, and in elegance of diction and manner of 
presentation tiiey were all that could be desired. They were her- 
alded to the country with the plaudits of the Administration and 
its friends. We have a right, I believe, to presume that in those 
two speeches are found all and the best that can be said in sup- 
port of carrying out the X)rogramme outlined in the bill and in the 
resolution. 

Mr. President, I am opposed to carrying out that programme. 
No vote of m.ine will aid in the execution, or rather in the perma- 
nent establishment, of this policy. I am opposed to that pro- 
gramme because, as I conceive it, without any disres^Dect to the 
opinions of others, I conceive it to be in violation, if carried out, 
of the fundamental principles on which our free institutions rest. 
I am opposed to it because it proposes to cut loose from the Con- 
stitution of our country. It seems to me not only to be extra- 
constitutional, but also unconstitutional. It proposes the assump- 
tion and exercise of authority and a rule b}' despotic sway — an 
authority not conferred by the Constitution or in any grant of 
power conveyed in the Constitution by the people of the United 
States. 

If this policy is to be carried out, it seems to me it must be by 
an authority self- assumed and usurped. I am opposed to this pro- 
gramme, because to carry it out, in my judgment, would be un- 
just, immoral, and a breach of the plighted faith of this nation. 
I am opposed to it, because, in my judgment, it would be destruc- 
tive of all the best interests, material, moral, social, and political, 
both of the people of the United States and of the people of the 
Philippine Islands. I am opposed to it because it is not growth; 
it is not progress; it is not expansion; it is reaction and retrogres- 
sion; it is death to all the highest and best ideals of those who 
created this Republic. 

Mr. President, I am opposed to it because it doe? not look for- 
ward, but carries us back to the old regimes of despotism, to the 
4235 



6 

principles of the Holy Alliance; to the divine right of kings to 
rule without the consent of the governed; to overthrow republics; 
to enslave peoples, and do that against which Monroe fulminated 
the proclamation of 1822. Those who are opposed to the pro- 
gramme which has been outlined for us can console themselves 
with the reflection that they have behind them and in aid of them 
morally all the best thought of the great men whose careers have 
adorned and made illustrious the history of our country. 

Mr. President, I always feel more comfortable— and 1 am en- 
tirely sincere in this statement — when 1 can find a fulcrum for my 
argument in the great historic State of Massachusetts. Reference 
has been made to the illustrious names of men who have had the 
honor of representing that State in the councils of this nation — 
John Quincy Adams, Daniel Webster, and others. I desire to 
invite the attention of the Senate to some remarks made by John 
Quincy Adams on the Fourth of July, 1821, in this city. Speak- 
ing upon the mission of America, he said: 

She has seen that probably for centuries to come all the contests of that 
aceldama, the European world, will be contests between' inveterate power 
and emerging right. Wherever the standard of freedom and independence 
has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions, and her 
prayers be. But she goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She 
is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the cham- 
pion and vindicator only of her own. She will recommend the general cause 
by the countenance of her voice and thebenignant sympathy of her example. 
She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, 
were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve her- 
self beyond the power of extrication in all the wars of interest and intrigue, 
of individiial avarice, envy, and ambition which assume the colors and usurp 
the standard of freedom. The fundamental maxims of her policy would 
insensibly change from liberty to force. The frontlet upon her brows would 
no longer beam with the ineffable splendor of freedom and independence; 
but in its stead would soon be substituted an imperial diadem, flashing in 
false and tarnished luster the murky radiance of dominion and power. She 
might become the dictatress of the world; she would no longer be the ruler 
of her own spirit. 

Mr. BATE. From whom is the Senator reading? 

Mr. RAWLINS. From John Quincy Adams. 

I may, without impropriety, refer to some words of Daniel Web- 
ster, to whom the junior Senator from Massachusetts last w^eek 
made reference. Speaking in the Senate in 1846, he used this lan- 
guage: 

An arbitrary government may have territorial governments in distant 
possessions, because an arbitrary government may rule its distant territories 
by different laws and different systems. Russia may govern the Ukraine 
and the Caucasus and Kamchatka by different codes or ukases. We can do 
no such thing. They must be of us, part of us, or else estranged. I think I 
see, then, in progress what is to disfigvire and deform the Constitution. 
* * * I think I see a course adopted that is likely to turn the Constitutioa 
under which we live into a deformed monster, into a curse rather than a 
l3lessing, into a great frame of unequal government, not founded on popular 
representation, but founded in the grossest inequalities; and I think if it go 
on— for there is a great danger that it will go on— that this Government will 
be broken up. 

Mr. President, it has been insisted that that prophecy has been 
falsified by experience. But it may not be true. It seems to me 
that to-day we are standing upon the brink of a precipice, beyond 
which those words contemplated that disaster would come upon 
us and upon our free institutions and upon our Republic. 

Alaska was ceded to us. Another distinguished Senator from 
Massachusetts spoke in behalf of the ratification of the treaty by 
which that transfer was to be effected. Charles Sumner used this 
language in the Senate, speaking with reference to Alaska: 

But there is one other point on which I file my caveat. This treaty must 
not be a precedent for a system of indiscriminate and costly annexation. 

4225 



Sincerely believing that republican institutions under the primacy of the 
United States must embrace this whole continent, I can not adopt the sen ti- 
ment of Jefferson, who, while confessing satisfaction in settlements on the 
Pacific coast, saw there in the future nothing but "free and independent 
Americans," bound to the United States only by "by ties of blood and inter- 
est," without political unity. Nor am I williug to I'estrain myself to the prin- 
ciple so tersely expressed by Andrew Jackson in his letter to President Mon- 
roe: "Concentrate our population, confine our frontier to proper limits, 
until our country, to those limits, is filled with a dense population." 

But I can not disguise my anxiety that every stage in our predestined fu- 
ture shall be by natural processes, without war, and , I would add , even without 
purchase. There is no territorial aggrandizement which is worth the price 
of blood. Ouly under peculiar circumstances can it become the sul)ject of 
peculiar contract. Our triumph should be by growth and organic expansion 
in obedience to " preestablished harmony," recognizing always the will of 
those who are to become our fellow- citizens. All this must be easy if we are 
only true to ourselves. Our motto may be that of Groethe, "Without haste, 
without rest. " Let the Republic be assured in tranquil liberty, Avith all equal 
before the law, and it will conquer by its sublime example. More happy than 
Austria, who acquired possessions by marriage, we shall acquire them by the 
attraction of republican institutions. 

Bella'gerant alii; tu, felix Austria, nube; 
Nam quae Mars aliis, dat tibi regna Venus. 

The famous epigram will be just as applicable to us, inasmuch as our acqui- 
sitions will be under the sanction of wedlock to the Republic. There may be 
wedlock of a people as well as of a prince. Meanwhile, our first care should 
be to improve and elevate the Republic, whose sway will be so comprehen- 
sive. Plant it with schools; cover it with churches; fill it with libraries; make 
it abundant with comfort, so that poverty shall disappear; keep it constant 
in the assertion of human rights. And here we may fitly recall those words 
of antiquity, which Cicero quoted from the Greek, and which Webster in our 
day quoted from Cicero, "You have a Sparta; adorn it." 

Mr. President, the Senator from Massachusetts [Mr. Lodge], 
who spoke last week, entertained the Senate by a masterly piece 
of eloquence, but he did not take as his text the principle which 
is found enunciated in the quotations which I have read to the 
Senate. 

I have a right to refer to another distinguished statesman from 
Massachusetts, who, by long and meritorious and patriotic and 
honorable service to his country, is entitled to a x)lace in history 
along with the names of the men to whom I have made reference. 
That Senator is here; he has spoken for himself, and will no doubt, 
whenever occasion requires, speak for himself; but the utterances 
which I have read to the Senate there is no doubt find a full in- 
dorsement in his judgment as they have found in his utterances 
in the Senate. 

The junior Senator from Massachusetts last week said that he 
preferred to "err with Pope than to shine with Pye." He meant 
to classify himself with Pope and to classify the men who took 
the view which has been expressed in the utterances of Adams 
and Webster and Sumner and Hoar in the category of Pye— he. 
Pope; they, Pye; he, historian, poet, sage, philosopher; he to be a 
gigantic figure in future history; they to dwindle down, to use 
his own language, beyond the point of detection of the ken of the 
antiquarian's microscope. 

Mr. President, the Senator from Massachusetts and other Sena- 
tors have affected to believe that they find warrant for the pro- 
gramme which they have outlined regarding the Philippine 
Islands — and it now develops that the same programme is to pertain 
to Puerto Rico — in Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of In- 
dependence, the great founder of the Democratic party. The 
jufiior Senator from Massachusetts in substance said that the 
principle or declaration that all just governments derive their 
powers from the consent of the governed was but an aphorism, a 

4235 



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loose, impractical generalization taken from Rousseau by Jeffer- 
son and inserted in a revolutionary proclamation to bolster a 
rickety rebellion against the mother country; which, when it had 
served that purpose as a makeshift, was in practice here discarded 
by the very man who had made use of it. 

The Senator devoted more than a third of his three hours' speech 
to what he conceived to be a pulverization of this keystone in the 
arch of liberty, the consent of the governed. He said that when 
Jefferson obtained the cession of Louisiana, it was without any re- 
gard to the 30,000 people who inhabited it; that that cession utterly 
ignored and disposed of, without their consent, the Indians who 
roamed over or had their habitation upon that vast territory. I 
desire, rather than to let the Senator from Massachusetts speak 
for Jefferson, to resent this slander upon this great man by read- 
ing what he himself said upon that subject. 

In his message which referred to this, his message of October 
17, 1803, found in Messages and Papers, Volume I, page 357, he 
referred to the fact that the right of deposit at the port of New 
Orleans had been suspended as to citizens of the United States. 
He further referred to the fact as to troubles which would con- 
stantly arise there by reason of foreign control of the mouth of 
that great channel of commerce, the Mississippi River. He then 
uses this language: 

Whilst the property and sovereignty of the Mississippi and its waters se- 
cure an independent outlet for the produce of the Western States and an 
uncontrolled navigation through their whole course, free from collision with 
other powers and the dangers to oar peace from that source, the fertility of 
the country, its climate, and extent promise in due season important aids to 
our Treasury, an ample provision for our posterity, and a wide spread for 
the blessings of freedom and equal laws. 

Mr. President, what were to be the rights of the inhabitants 
under the arrangement which Jefferson made? They were to be 
given free choice as to the country to which they should render 
allegiance; they were to be protected in their homes and in all 
their rights and property. If they continued to reside in the ceded 
territory, they were to have all the rights, privileges, and immu- 
nities accruing to citizens of the United States under the Consti- 
tution of our country. Thus there Vv^as no possibility of wrong 
to accrue to any one of those people. They were not made citi- 
zens unless they elected to become so by their free consent. 

How did Jefferson regard the Indians and how did he propose to 

deal with them? Let us read his own words upon the subject. On 

page 358 he says: 

With the wisdom of Congress it will rest to take those ulterior measures 
which may be necessary for the immediate occupation and temporary gov- 
ernment of the country — 

The original act was to continue in force until the expiration of 

the session of Congress which passed it — 

for its incorporation into our Union, for rendering the change of government 
a blessing to our newly adopted brethren. 

That was the great end for which this territory was acquired. 

As to the Indians, he says: 

For securing to them the rights of conscience and of property; for con- 
firming to the Indian inhabitants their occupancy and self-government, estab- 
lishing friendly and commercial relations witli them, and for ascertaining 
the geography of the country acquired, etc. 

Permit me, Mr. President, to allude to the Indians. The prop- 
osition of the Senator from Massachusetts was that they were 
governed without their consent and disposed of without any re- 
gard to their wishes. No Indian tribe ever had any tax imposed 

4225 



9 

upon them. They have never been amenable to the law, civil or 
criminal, of the United States. They have been left in that regard 
as free and independent communities, to be subject alone to the 
laws and customs of the tribe. They had no fixed habitation in 
that vast territory. They roamed over it; they camped, and hunted 
the wild beasts that infested it. 

Jefferson and those who followed after him and who acted upon 
his theory and upon his principle never took from them one foot 
of that land, one iota of that right, vague and uncertain as it was, 
without their consent obtained by treaties regularly made and 
ratified. This Government only has interposed to prevent them 
from committing depredation upon the lives and property of 
American citizens, acting only as to them in self-defense of its 
people and its property. 

There is, therefore, absolutely no warrant in any contention 
as to the Indians for the statement that Jefferson abandoned the 
principle that governments derive their just powers from the con- 
sent of the governed. But in this same message Mr. Jefferson, 
at that time further interpreting his purpose in that regard, said— 
and I read from page 361: 

Separated by a wide ocean from the nations of Europe and from the polit- 
ical interests which entangle them together, with productions and wants 
which render our commerce and friendship useful to them and theirs to us, 
it can not be the interest of any to assail us, nor ours to disturb them. We 
should be most unwise, indeed, were we to cast away the singular blessings 
of the position in which nature has placed us, the opportunity she has en- 
dowed us with of pursuing, at a distance from foreign contentions, the paths 
of industry, peace, and happiness, of cultivating general friendship, and of 
bringing collisions of interest to the umpirage of reason rather than of force. 

Mr. President, I have already alluded to the fact that Mr. Jef- 
ferson's doubt and fear was not that the Constitution did extend 
to this territory, but that it did not, and that if it did not it could 
not be held. That was a plain, natural, and logical conclusion, 
because if the Constitution did not extend by its authority there, 
Congress could not in virtue of the Constitution extend its arm of 
control there. To hold that it was outside of the Constitution 
would be to emasculate the power with respect to it of every gov- 
ernmental agency and department created and owing its existence 
under and by virtue of the Constitution. 

But that was settled at a very early date. By no act of Con- 
gress was the Constitution expressly extended to the Louisiana 
Territory. I refer now to a noted historical incident in the career 
of our country after the duel between Hamilton and Aaron Burr, 
in which the former lost his life. Aaron Burr went West and 
entered into consultation and conference with Blennerhasset, and 
finally with Clark, who had his home in New Orleans. In a little 
time he was charged with having waged war against the United 
States. The act charged in the indictment was laid in the Terrl° 
tory of New Orleans, a part of the Louisiana purchase. The trea- 
son consisted, according to the charge, in levying war against 
New Orleans for the purpose of setting up at that point an empire 
to include Mexico. He w^as arrested and made application for 
discharge by a writ of habeas corpus, which came before the 
Supreme Court of the United States. 

The unanimous opinion of that court was delivered by our first 
great Chief Justice. In the course of that opinion Chief Ju,stice 
Marshall quoted from the Constitution of the United States: 

Treason against the United States shall consist only in levying war against 
them or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort, 
i335 



10 

Did that provision apply only to the States? It says distinctly: 

Treason against the United States shall consist only in levying war against 
them. 

They did not seek to try Burr under the civil law or under the 
Code Napoleon for treason defined in that law, which operated in 
Louisiana, except as it was inconsistent with the Constitution of 
the United States, but, according to this modern theory, without 
any i-regard to consistency with the Constitution of the United 
States. They proceeded upon the idea that this provision consti- 
tuted the definition of the crime. It was in virtue of that that 
Burr was to be prosecuted for the act committed in the Territory 
of New Orleans, and that the limitations upon this power to pros- 
ecute him— the offense as here defined— also pertained to that case 
and he was entitled to the benefits of those limitations. What are 
the limitations? I read them: 

Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against 
them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them a,id and comfort. No per- 
son shall be convicted of treason unless on the testimony of two witnesses to 
the same overt act, or on confession in open court. 

Burr claimed the benefit of that limitation. What did Marshall 
say? On page 41 of this volume he says: 

To complete the crime of levying war against the United States there must 
be an actual assemblage of men for the purpose of executing a treasonable 
design. In the case now before the court, a design to overturn the Govern- 
ment of the United States in New Orleans by force, wovild have been unques- 
tionably a design which, if f;arried into execution, would have been treason, 
and the assemblage of a body of inen for the purpose of carrying it into exe- 
cution would amount to levying of Avar against the United States. 

The Senator from Ohio [Mr. Fora.ker] challenged any author- 
ity anywhere prior to about 1850 for the contention that the Consti- 
tution operated within outlying territories of the United States. 
The Senator from Kentucky [Mr. Lindsay] who made, as he 
always does, in harmony with his great and well-merited reputa- 
tion as a lawyer, a very able presentation of the questions involved 
and their legal phases, if I understood him correctly, took the 
position that the rights, privileges, and immunities in these terri- 
tories ceded from France and from Spain and from Mexico to the 
United States, which had been successfully claimed before the 
courts by their inhabitants, had all been derived from and were 
dependent upon the stipulations of the treaties between the gov- 
ernments in those cases. I do not think that contention does credit 
to the great reputation of the distinguished Senator, with all due 
respect. 

Let us see what follows from that. When these respective gov- 
ernments ceded the territories in question to the United States, 
they thereby retained no residuary sovereignty or dominion over 
those territories or their future inhabitants. The inhabitants, or 
those who might thereafter go into those territories, or be born in 
those territories within the jurisdiction and sovereignty of the 
United States, could not be told that their rights, privileges, and 
immunities were dependent upon the grace of any foreign prince 
or potentate. That contention is utterly absurd. A citizen of 
Arizona can not by any treaty stipulation between this country 
and any foreign prince or potentate have his rights stipulated 
away. It is not the subject-matter of treaty stipulation. 

What did these treaties undertake to deal with? And first as 
to the treaty with Spain ceding Florida, the territory which had 
belonged to Spain. It was a legitimate subject of treaty stipula- 
tion. Spain ceded her sovereignty and control over it to the 

4225 



11 

United States. That ended that phase of it. What njore? There 
were inhabitants, subjects of the Kingdom of Spain then occupy- 
ing that land. Their interests and their rights were in a measure 
involved in. that transfer. 

Mr. BACON. To which Spanish transfer does the Senator from 
Utah refer? 

Mr. R A.WLINS. The treaty in regard to Florida. What should 
be done with those people; as to those precise inhabitants living 
upon the territory at the time of cession who were then and had 
been citizens and subjects of Spain and entitled to her protection? 
When the territory was ceded, their rights, being a matter of in- 
ternational concern, it was agreed they should be protected by 
certain guaranties applying personally to them and not to the ter^ 
ritories; preserving their rights, securing to them the free exercise 
of religion, the rights, privileges, and immunities of citizenship, 
giving them the free choice as to what government they would 
render allegiance. Beyond that the treaty did not undertake to 
go. Next as to the treaty with Mexico. What did it provide? 
I will read the clause. It is found on page 495 of the Public 
Treaties of the United States: 

Mexicans now established in territories previously belonging to Mexico, 
and which remain for the future within the limits of the United States, as 
defined by the present treaty, shall be free to continue where they now re- 
side, or to remove at any time to the Mexican Republic, retaining the prop- 
erty which they possess in the said territories, or disposing thereof, and re- 
moving the proceeds wherever they please, without their being subjected, on 
this account, to any contribution, tax, or charge whatever. 

Those who shall prefer to remain in the said territories may either retain 
the title and rights of Mexican citizens or acquire those of citizens of the 
United States. 

Thus giving them their free choice as to what government they 
would render their allegiance. 

But they shall be under the obligation to make their election within one 
year from the date of the exchange of ratifications of this treaty; and those 
wJio shall remain in the said territories after the expiration of that year, 
without having declared their intention to retain the character of Mexicans, 
shall be considered to have elected to become citizens of the United States. 

In the said territories property of every kind now belonging to Mexicans 
not established there shall be inviolably respected. The present owners, the 
heirs of these, and all Mexicans who may hereafter acquire said property by 
contract, shall enjoy with respect to guaranties equally ample as if the same 
belonged to citizens of the United States. 

Now, article 9. Let me read that: 

The Mexicans who, in the territories aforesaid, shall not preserve the 
character of citizens of the Mexican Republic, conformably with what is stipu- 
lated in the preceding article, shall be incorporated into the Union of the 
United States, and be admitted at the proper time (to be judged of by the 
Congress of the United Statesj to the enjoyment of all the rights of citizens 
of the United States, according to the principles of the Constitution; and. in 
the meantime, shall be maintained and protected in the free enjoyment of 
their liberty and property, and secured in the free exercise of their religion 
without restriction. 

Tliat I may do no injustice to the Senator from Kentucky [Mr. 
Lindsay] , I v/ill quote exactly what he said upon this subject. I 
had the honor a week or two ago to ask the Senator from Ken- 
tucky a question referring to cases arising in the territory ceded 
by Mexico to the United States, which I had digested in a speech 
I delivered something more than a year ago. The Senator from 
Kentucky undoubtedly refers to that question in this language: 

I was asked the other day how I explained the decisions of the Supreme 
Court in cases arising in Territories acquired by the treaty with Mexico, to 
the effect that Congress could not provide for twice punishing a man for the 
same offense and could not make applicable to that territory a bill of at- 
tainder, and could not dispense with the trial by jury in cases at comrnon law 

4325 



12 

involving more than $20, and could not take away from tlie accused the right 
to confront the witnesses who may testify against him, and could not put a 
man on trial without previous information of the nature of the accusation. 

My explanation is that the Constitution of the United States protects the 
citizens of the United States against any one of those abuses of power, and 
that the inhabitants of the territory acquired from Mexico were made citi- 
zens of the United States by the ratification of a treaty which clothed them 
with American citizenship, and in express and unqualified terms secured to 
them the enjoyment of the rights of citizens of the United States according 
to the principles of the Constitution. 

Those wlio represent what they term the anti-imperial sentiment of the 
country will not, of course, accept the explanation as satisfactory. They pro- 
pose to look beyond and behind the stipulations contained in the treaties 
with France, Spain, Mexico, and Etissia, and, doing so, to commit the Su- 
preme Court to a rule of decision that will preclude the judiciary department 
of the Government from recognizing the power of Congress to exercise sound 
legislative discretion in carrying out so much of the treaty of Paris as pro- 
vides that— 

" The civil and political status of the native inhabitants of the territories 
ceded to the United States shall be determined by the Congress." 

In the numerous cases to which I have made reference arising 
in the territory ceded by Mexico in 1848 — cases which held that the 
defendant could not be denied the free exercise of religion; cases 
which held that a defendant in the territory could not be tried 
except by an impartial jury of twelve men; cases which held that 
the defendant must be informed of the cause and nature of the 
accusation; cases which held that in respect of the people in that 
territory Congress could pass no ex post facto law or bill of attain- 
der; cases maintaining the right of the defendant in an action at 
common law to a jury trial, etc. — unfortunately for the position 
and contention of the Senator from Kentucky, in not one of those 
cases w^as the defendant in a position to claim any right, privi- 
lege, or immunity under the treaty with Mexico. Not one of them 
was a Mexican or ever had been a ]Mexican. Every one of them 
had gone to that territory after it had been acquired from Mexico 
and while it was under the absolute dominion and control of the 
United States. 

In not one of those cases was any such privilege or immunity 
set up or claimed by the defendant. In no one of those cases did 
the Supreme Court allude to the treaty or any treaty as the basis 
of the privilege set up and claimed by the defendant. Nor did any 
judge of the Supreme Court of the United States nor the court it- 
self, in any of the cases which have been cited, ever base the decision 
upon the ground that the Constitution secured the rights claimed 
by virtue of being extended by an act of Congress, evidently real- 
izing that an act of Congress is an inadequate basis upon which 
to rest the Constitution. In every case the Supreme Court of the 
United States said the power of this Government was restrained 
in its legislation and in the exercise of power in the Territory by 
those great principles of constitutional liberty which constitute 
restriction upon the powers both of the State and the Federal Gov- 
ernment; that the citizens, each and every one of them, arraigned 
and charged, was entitled to the protection of that instrument 
wherever he might be, whether in a State or Territory, anywhere 
within the political jurisdiction of the United States. That is the 
ground upon which all these cases rest. 

Mr. President, the cases go back to the very inception. For in- 
stance, in 3 Howard there is the case of Pollard tis. Hagan, page 212, 
and the part of the syllabus bearing upon this question is as follows: 

Under the Florida treaty the United States did not succeed to those rights 
which the King of Spain had held by virtue of his royal prerogative, but 
possessed the territory stibject to the institutions and laws of its own gov- 
ernment. 
4225 



13 

Further in the opinion of the court — and it was a very distin- 
guished and able court, among its members being Mr. Justice 
Story — page 224, this language is employed: 

And all constitutional laws are binding on the people in the new States 
and the old ones whether they consent to he bound by them or not. Every 
constitutional act of Congress is passed by the will of the people of the United 
States, expressed through their representatives, on the subject-matter of the 
enactment; and when so passed it becomes the supreme law of the land and 
operates by its own force on the subject-matter in whatever State or Terri- 
tory it may happen to be. The proposition, therefore, that such a law can 
not operate upon the subject-matter of its enactment without the express 
consent of the people of the new State where it may happen to be contains 
its own refutation and requires no further examination. 

Further on, page 225, this language is used: 
It can not be admitted— 

This is very pertinent to the proposition of the Senator from 
Kentucky: 

It can not be admitted that the King of Spain could, by treaty or other- 
wise, impart to the United States any of his royal prerogatives, and much 
less can it be admitted that they have capacity to receive or power to exer- 
cise them. Every nation acqxiiring territory, by treaty or otherwise, must 
hold it subject to tbe constitution and laws of Its own government and not 
according to those of the government ceding it. 

These are very early cases, long before 1850. In practice the 
men who framed the Constitution and those who immediately 
followed them in control of the Government of the United States 
never had a doubt that Congress only had authority by virtue of 
the Constitution to legislate at all for the Territories; that when it 
did legislate it must find its source of power in the people's grant 
of power— the Constitution; that it must be exercised in the mode 
which that instrument prescribes; that the act of Congress must 
have the concurrence of the President; that it must be circum- 
scribed within the limitations which that instrument prescribes 
for the exercise of Congressional power. 

It is a plain and inevitable proposition that you can not go in 
virtue of the Constitution and leave the Constitution behind you. 
If you cut loose from it, you have nothing to support your author- 
ity. Such was the idea of those who founded this (jrovernment, 
and in all of the early statutes they did not say the Constitution is 
hereby extended to the Territories, but they said all legislation, 
national and local, must not bs inconsistent with the Constitu- 
tion of the United States, thus presupposing it to be already 
there. 

But after 1850 there was a question raised whether the Consti- 
tution extended, and but for one reason it never v^ould have found 
lodgment in any human brain within the confines of our country. 
What was that? The Constitution contained in one of its clauses 
a recognition of slavery. A party grew up in this country opposed 
to the further extension of slavery. If the Constitution v*^ent by 
its own inherent force into new territory, it would carry with it 
the recognition of the right to hold slaves. Benton revolted at the 
idea. He limited his contention, to use his own words, as quoted 
by the Senator from Ohio, to that one provision in the Constitution. 
But he was overruled. The cases to which I have alluded, the 
Dred Scott case, the decision in regard to the scope of the revenue 
laws of the United States, and numerous cases to v/hich I referred 
at the last session of Congress and which have been frequently 
referred to since, all disposed of that idea. 

But, Mr. President, by the thirteenth amendment the reason of 
the objection to the extension of the Constitution which was made 
4235 



14 

by Benton and those who agreed with him was eliminated, and 
the reason ceasing to their minds, undoubtedly the principle fell 
with it, that that provision of the Constitution did not so extend. 
Why should anyone, against this overwhelming practice, against 
all the numerous decisions from the foundation of our Government 
down to tiie present time, at this time seek to curtail and circum- 
scribe the principles of the Constitution? 

Mr. President, the Senator from Kentucky in his speech, great 
and masterly in statement, but utterly unwarranted in its prem- 
ises, virtually appeals to the Supreme Court to override all the 
precedents in order that we may say that people of our own flesh 
and blood, citizens of this our common country, who may see fit 
to take up their abodes in some of the distant possessions which it 
is claimed have come to us, shall not there have their rights con- 
served by this Constitution of ours. I understand well enough 
that a court, when it finds that a former decision was erroneous 
and mistaken, will not hesitate, upon sufficient reason, to overrule 
it; but when it involves a question of constitutional construction 
or even statutory construction, the court will not overrule it ex- 
cept when it feels constrained to do so in order to carry into effect 
the great end and purposes for which the Constitution was or- 
dained or the statute enacted. 

But now the Senator from Kentucky invites the Supreme Court 
to ignore the great purpose for which the Constitution was framed, 
namely, to secure to the people of the United States, the entire 
body of citizenship, native born or naturalized, to secure to all of 
them and to their posterity, wherever they might be (and they 
knew they were a migrating, a progressive, an expanding idco- 
ple, they were State builders), wherever tbe}^ might go, within 
the political jurisdiction of this Government, not limiting it to the 
particular number of square feet of the original thirteen States, 
the rights and blessings of constitutional liberty.- 

And in 10 Howard, a very early case, that idea is expressed so 
potently and so tersely that it seems to me that high authority 
ought not to be gainsaid. I read from page 98 of 10 Howard: 

The Constitution was, in tlie language of the ordinance— 

That is the ordinance of 1787 — 

adopted by common conseiat, and the people of the Territories must neces- 
sarily be regarded as parties to it— 

The people of the Territories must necessarily be regarded as 
parties to it — 

and bound by it, and entitled to its benefits, as well as the people of the then 
existing States. It became the supreme law throughout the United States. 
And so far as any obligations of good faith had been previously incurred by 
the ordinance, they were faithfully carried into execution by the power and 
authority of the new Government. 

Thus, Mr. President, you can not find warrant in our Constitu- 
tion or structure of government to rale with despotic sway ac- 
cording to an unrestrained, arbitrary will anywhere. 

This was one of the things which the f ramers of the Constitution 
intended to overthrow for all time and as to all territory. 

Now we turn to this last treaty, the treaty with Spain. I have, 
before me Senate Document No. 62, Part 1, and I turn to page 8. 
This question is dealt with in Articles IX and X of the treaty. 

Mr. SPOONER. Will the Senator from Utah allow me to ask 
him a question? 
4225 



15 

The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Kean in the chair). Does 
the Senator from Utah yield to the Senator from Wisconsin? 

Mr. RAWLINS. I j'ield to the Senator. 

Mr. SPOONER. IsittheSenator'stheory thatimmediatelyupon 
the acquisition by the United States of the territorj'' the Consti- 
tution proprio vigore extends over it? 

Mr. RAWLINS. I will answer that question. I will answer it 
now if the Senator desires. 

Mr. SPOONER. At your leisure. I do not want to inte«rupt 
the Senator. 

Mr. RAWLINS. I will answer it in more detail as I progress. 

Mr. SPOONER. 1 beg pardon for interrupting the Senator. I 
do not want to interfere with the line of his argument at all. 

Mr. RAWLINS. I will proceed with my argument, if it is the 
same to the Senator, on the right acquired by treaty. 

This Article X first deals with the Spanish subjects, natives of 
the Peninsula residing in the territory over which Spain, by the 
present treaty, relinquishes or cedes her sovereignty. It deals with 
those who were born upon the Peninsula of Spain. It gives them 
the right of choice as to which Government they shall render 
their allegiance, protects them in their property and in their 
homes, and conserves their rights in the same language as in the 
case of the Florida treaty. Now, that is all; nothing more. That 
only applies, of course, to those who come within that descrip- 
tion. It does not operate to protect and subserve the rights or 
privileges or immunities of anybody else. Next it deals with 
another class of cases in the following language: 

The civil rights and political status of the native inhabitants of the Terri- 
:tories hereby ceded to the United States shall be determined by the Con- 
gress. 

Now, that covers only those who come within that description. 
The native inhabitants of the Philippine Islands are to be dealt 
with in the language of this treaty. Their civil and political 
status are to be dealt with by Congress. That does not include 
Englishmen, Germans, or Frenchmen, or any other of the great 
variety of nationalities who may be there. They do not come 
within its terms. It includes no American, of course, for he is 
not a native of those islands. It does not include any Chinamen, 
and there are more than 100,000 of them there, as I understand, 
nor any Japanese. You find, therefore, nothing in this. The Sena- 
tor from Kentucky [Mr. Lindsay] bases the entire superstructure 
of our authority upon this first clause. 

Now, that brings me to the question the Senator from Wiscon- 
sin [Mr. SpoonerJ asked me a while ago. Here are large classes 
of people who do not come within any of the provisions of any of 
these treaties. What is to become of their rights? We can not 
get any power, arbitrary, despotic, to dispose of the native inhab- 
itants. That is left to Congress in the treaty. By this treaty the 
King of Spain does not undertake to grant any of his royal pre- 
rogatives, any of his autocratic power, if he possess any, to the 
United States or to Congress or to anybody else to deal with these 
people. The Supreme Court has said, and it is a very plain propo- 
sition (I can not see how anyone v/ould question it), that this Gov- 
ernment of ours is incapable of receiving any such grant if the 
King of Spain or any foreign potentate should undertake to make 
it; but he does not undertake to make it in this case. 

But there are other people who do not come within any of the 
provisions, to whom it makes no possible reference. What are w© 
4225 



16 

to do with, them? Well, with respect to any territory ceded, the 
cession does not change the national character of the territory — 
so says Chancellor Kent— pending the transitory period from the 
time of the cession until delivery of possession has actually taken 
place. What will become of the territory if no disposition of it is 
made? Of course it must be determined by the authority which 
is entitled to speak for the United States so far as it concerns the 
United States. To speak how? To speak by virtue of the author- 
ity which it possesses. Derived from what source? From the 
people of the United States. How? By the Constitution, which 
constitutes the people's grant of power. What is that authority 
under the Constitution? When you have ansv/ered that, then you 
have answered the entire inquiry. 

It is tlie Congress which is to speak, with the concurrence of the 
President, legislating in the method which the Constitution pre- 
scribes after the possession of any ceded territory has been actu- 
ally transferred, has been accepted, and the authority of the consti- 
tutional power of this Government is established there. It is es- 
tablished under the Constitution, by virtue of the Constitution, 
with all the limitations which the Constitution prescribes, and 
the Constitution is there just as much as it is in the District of 
Columbia or as it is in any other of the Territories over which the 
jurisdiction of the United States has become finally and perma- 
nently established. 

Mr. President, in a sense, of course, the Constitution is in the 
territory by virtue of an act of Congress. It is in virtue of it, just 
as the control of a piece of property comes within the dominion of 
the person to whom it is transferred. He holds it, and certain in- 
cidental rights go with it, subject to certain conditions and cer- 
tain laws. So it is for the proper constitittional authority of the 
United States to accept territory by formal, solemn act and to as- 
sert final dominion. The dominion of other powers over it having 
come to an end finally, then authority is established there by vir- 
tue of the Constitution, and all the inhabitants who live there, 
citizens of the United States or otherwise, have secured to them 
all the rights, privileges, and immunities which that instrument 
accords to citizens anywhere. 

Political power, the power to govern and the right to vote, is 
one thing. The Constitution does not confer that right upon any- 
one. The right to a trial by jury it does secure to everybody. It 
makes no reference to the right to go and cast a ballot to hold a 
particular office. The Constitution confers no such right. Sup- 
pose the Constitution is there; no right to anyone is derived in 
those respects, because that instrument does not purport to confer 
such rights anj'-where. But it is otherwise as to those iirovisions 
designed to secure the blessings of liberty, individual liberty, the 
right to life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, the free exercise of 
religion, to be exempt from unreasonable searches and seizures, 
not to have passed any ex post facto law to operate upon him, or 
any bill of attainder working corruption of his blood, not to be 
subject to punishment for treason except within the limitation 
prescribed by the Constitution, that Congress may not grant any 
title of nobility anywhere. 

These outlying territories, when our authority is once estab- 
lished there, are a part of the land, and they and all the people 
within them are subject to the supreme law of the land. _ That is 
the answer which I make to the Senator from Wisconsin. We 
do not get any right over the native inhabitants of the Philippine 

4225 



17 

Islands by that treaty. It confers none. May Congress dispose 
of tliem? How? What is Congress? Cut loose from the Con- 
stitution and ignore it, and tell me, what is Congress? Obliterate 
it and cast it out of your mind, and answer the question, What is 
Congress? 

How is Congress to exercise its power if you are to ignore the 
Constitution, if it is so much waste, blank paper? Are we to or- 
ganize into a mob? Are we to be like the forty tyrants? Are we 
to become marauders and freebooters, cut loose from the Constitu- 
tion, which is the only source of authority to act? No; we are the 
Congress as defined in the Constitution. How are we to act? All 
revenue bills must originate in the other House. We are to pro- 
ceed according to the constitutional methods, with the concur- 
rence of the President. In legislating we must not undertake by 
edict of legislation to take property from one and give it to another 
without due process of law. That is not legislation. 

After our authority is established there, when the laws of war 
end or the conditions upon which the writ of habeas corpus may 
be suspended, you can not hang a Filipino without trial. You 
can not punish him twice for the same offense; you can not cast 
him down into a dungeon to await the incoming tide to takeaway 
his life. Can you? If so, how? Even in war the Supreme Court 
of the United States has said in the Milliken case (4 Wallace) : 

This Constitution of ours operates in war, as well as in peace, in all places, 
and under all circumstances. It is a law for the rulers as well as for the 
people; each and every one everywhere within our political jurisdiction is 
hound by it. 

[At this point the Presiding OfScer announced that the hour of 
2 o'clock had arrived, when the unfinished business was laid be- 
fore the Senate. Unanimous consent was given, on the request 
of Mr. FoRAKER, that Mr. Rawlins might conclude his speech.] 

Mr. RAWLINS. Mr. President, without further reference to 
the constitutional question, I next invite the attention of the 
Senate to some moral phases of the question which pertains to the 
Philippines. 

The Senator from Massachusetts [Mr. Lodge] complained that 
while the Republican party or tjie Administration had a simple, 
clear and^well-defined, positive policy in regard to the Philippines, 
those who were in opposition to that had not presented anything 
except that which was vague, uncertain, and elusive. 

We find in the resolution of the Senator from Indiana [Mr. 
Beveridge] what seems to be a clear and positive declaration. 
It is easily understood. So far as I am concerned, and I speak, of 
course, only for myself, it would be useless for me to outline what 
I would do under any hypothesis which does not exist. If we 
propound a policy to-day, we in the opposition are utterly power- 
less to carry it into execution. 

But, Mr. President, the policy is to defeat the purpose of the 
dominant power so far as it is expressed, if I understand it, in 
these two measures. That is an affirmative policy of itself. I 
think I see in your hand a bludgeon, which, if let loose, which, if 
not stricken from your hand, will work detriment not only to 
the intended victim, but to yourselves and to ourselves, and I will, 
if I can, strike it from your hands and prevent you from doing 
that harm which must be the consequence if you are permitted to 
go on. Hence, you shall receive no vote of mine in aid of carry- 
ing out this programme. But if we defeat the programme, what, 
then, should you do? 
4225-2 



18 

Mr. President, if I should be permitted to speak upon this ques- 
tion, I think it would resolve itself largely into a detail of trans- 
portation and an ocean voyage. If those who are in the majority 
in the Senate ask me what I would advise them to do, I would point 
them to Spion Kopje, to do what Buller did when he found him- 
self there in an untenable position — to execute a masterly and or- 
derly retreat. I am trying to conform to the dictates of the Con- 
stitution, to our moral obligations, and to fulfill the pledges which 
have been put forth by our people. 

The Senator from Massachusetts said that we invite the Re- 
publican party to make promises. He says promises and hesi- 
tations to the Asiatic or Malay mind simply excite, exasperate 
those people to a breach of the peace and disturbance, and make 
them want to kill somebody. When I read that it struck me as a 
most peculiar proposition. That can not be true of all promises. 
I think the distinguished Senator must have had in his mind the 
promises of the Republican party. The thing has gone to that ex- 
tent where those promises almost have that effect sometimes upon 
the Anglo-Saxon mind. 

Mr. President, it can not be that the gallant young Malay, when 
he has succeeded in extracting a promise from his sweetheart, 
straightway goes off and kills somebody. The expectation of ful- 
fillment of tiie promise presupposes confidence. Without this, 
human society could not exist, mankind could not be. On these 
things perhaps more than all else men depend for present and 
eternal happiness. If there is anything that sweetens life; that 
elevates the soul from the groveling to the sublime and the God- 
like; that touches the seolian chords of sympathy, causing them 
to vibrate in unison with tones of healing to misery, awakening 
to ecstacy the wretched downcast spirit, it emanates from the 
purest word distilled into the ear — the sweet promise of an eter- 
nity of joy as the reward of a life of virtue. 

Mr. President, the Senator proposes to strike promise and hope 
away from the vocabulary of the Filipino. There is to be for him 
no rule prescribed in advance to which he may conform his future 
conduct. Pie is not to be permitted to know to-day what his fate 
will be to-morrow. That proposition, to my mind, is for malev- 
olence, the most diabolical which ever emanated from human lips. 
The Senator from Massachusetts could not have meant that. He 
must have meant the promise which turned to perfidy, the per- 
fidious violation of plighted faith, the promise made to the ear and 
broken to the hope, the bitterness of soul which arises from con- 
fidence betrayed and expectations thwarted. 

Mr. President, these things tend to excite the human mind and 
exasperate the human soul and lead to bloodshed and disturbance 
not only in the Asiatic territory but in the territory inhabited 
any v/here with people having the motives and aspirations and the 
characteristics of humanity. 

Mr. President, our troubles in the Philippine Islands are not 
due to the fact that promises were made. Those people were led 
to believe by the proclamation of the President, issued through 
Otis, by the proclamation of the President, issued through General 
Miller, that this great white Republic of ours had spoken to them 
with a deceptive and a forked tongue. That drove them to exas- 
peration, and to that must be ascribed the waste and the blood- 
shed and the deaths of our brave soldiers. 

Mr. President, the Senator from Massachusetts says that no 
pledges or promises were made under the authority of the United 

422o 



19 

States to the Filipino people. The Senator says, in the first place — 
and I invite attention to that proposition — that there were no sol- 
diers in the Philippine Islands in antagonism to the authority of 
Spain at the time of the declaration of war by the United States 
against Spain. He says the report that there were 5,000 Filipinos 
in arms in Luzon turned out to be untrue; that no such thing ex- 
isted. 

Our consul-general at Manila officially reported to the Presi- 
dent of the United States that there were 5,000 Filipinos in arms; 
that the insurrection was going on, and that Spaniards were be- 
ing killed and were being brought into Manila daily before that 
declaration of war. That document was sent to us by the sanc- 
tion and approval of the President, and it is embodied in Senate 
Document No. 62. Our consul-general at Singapore, Mr. Pratt, 
officially reported to the President prior to the 1st day of May, 
about the 28th day of April, just after the declaration of war 
with Spain, that Aguinaldo was then at Singapore and was direct- 
ing the operations of the armed insurgents, 5,000 in number, in 
the island of Luzon, waging war against Spain, 

General Anderson was the first to arrive in Luzon. He went 
there with the expeditionary forces and arrived there about the 
2d or 3d day of July. General Anderson refers to this statement 
and says that it is true. He says this in an article on "Our rule 
in the Philippines," printed recently in the North American Re- 
view. I quote his language: 

On the 1st of July, 1898, I called on Aguinaldo with Admiral Dawey. He 
asked me at once whethei' "the United States of the ISToi'tli" either had 
I'ecognized or would recognize his government — 1 am not quite sure as to the 
form of his question, whether it was " had " or " would." In either form it 
was embarrassing. My orders were, in substance, to effect a landing, es- 
tablish a base, not to go beyond the zone of naval cooperation, to consult 
Admiral Dewey, and to wait for Merritt. Aguinaldo had proclaimed his 
government only a few days before (June 28) and Admiral Dewey had no 
instructions as to that assumption. The facts as to the situation at that 
time I believe to be these: Consul Williams states in one of his letters to 
the State Depai'tment that several thousand Tagals were in open insurrec- 
tion before our declaration of war with Spain. I do not know as to the 
number, yet I believe the statement has foundation in fact. 

So we have the concurrent testimony of Williams and Pratt and 
General Anderson that this fact is true; and yet against this con- 
sensus of authority the Senator from Massachusetts says that it 
false. He does not give us the benefit of the authority upon which 
he bases that assertion. 

As soon as our war was declared, our consul-general at Singa- 
pore had an interview, as he reported to the Administration here, 
with Aguinaldo in the presence of certain other persons. He says 
in that report that Aguinaldo was then carrying on the war 
against Spain independently. He first urged upon him the im- 
portance of ceasing such independent warfare against Spain and 
of cooperating with the United States. 

He reports that Aguinaldo said that he was willing to cooperate 
to subserve the purpose which he then declared to our consul- 
general, namely, that he would be satisfied with the same treat- 
ment which the United States proposed to accord to Cuba. There- 
upon our consul-general, our sole representative at that port at 
that time, said that would be satisfactory, and he telegraphed to 
Admiral Dewey that Aguinaldo would go at his instance to 
Hongkong to join the forces of the United States, and that Ad- 
miral Dewey telegraphed back: " Tell Aguinaldo to come as soon 
as possible;" that on the first vessel outgoing from Singapore 

4335 



20 

Aguinaldo took his departure, but arrived in Hongkong too late 
to go with Dewey's fleet to Manila. Then Mr, Wildman, consul- 
general of the United States at Hongkong, tells us that a procla- 
mation summoning the Filipino people to arms had been prepared 
at Hongkong and was carried to Luzon by the American Navy. 

What was that proclamation? It summoned the people to arms; 
declared that the United States and its forces were going there as 
their liberators, to bring to them that for which they struggled. 
At the very first conference between Aguinaldo and Pratt at Singa- 
pore, on the 26th day of April, Aguinaldo declared the purpose of 
his cooperation in the war of the Filipino people against Spain 
was to achieve independence and self-government. These facts 
were at once communicated, as will appear by an examination of 
the documents, laid by the sanction of the President before the 
Senate, to the Administration. 

About the 6th of June, after Aguinaldo arrived — Aguinaldo 
arrived in Luzon on the 19th day of May — the Filipino people 
flocked to his standard. He began his operations, and in an in- 
credibly short time he had 9,000 Spanish prisoners in his custody. 
He was in possession before the arrival of the first expeditionary 
forces of the United States of all of Luzon outside of the city of 
Manila, and the Spanish army there were his prisoners. 

When Anderson arrived, did he carry any message from the 
Administration repudiating the pledges which had been made by 
Pratt and by Wildman? General Anderson has told us to the con- 
trary. You must remember now, Mr. President, that the Admin- 
istration was fully advised prior to the arrival of Anderson, prior 
to the 1st day of June; that the Secretary of State, and presumably 
the President, was fully advised of the expectations of the Filipino 
people and what the nature of their cooperation with the United 
States was to be. If a man asks the service of another, and that 
other says to him, "You may have it for a certain price," and the 
first tells the latter to go to work, and he does so, it is a contract 
recognized as obligatory in every forum of justice. 

This Government, from the President down to the consul-gen- 
eral, knew before Anderson arrived with the first expeditionary 
force in the Philippine Islands that the object of the services which 
Aguinaldo and his forces were rendering to the United States was 
to compass and bring about their independence and self-govern- 
ment. 

Let us see what General Anderson says upon that subject. I 
read from the North American Review. He says: 

Whether Admiral Dewey and Consuls Pratt, Wildman, and Williams did 
or did not give Aguinaldo assurances that a Filipino government would be 
recognized, the Filipinos certainly thought so, probably inferring this from 
their acts rather than from their statements. 

The Secretary of State, Mr. Day, knew that they thought so, and 
he writes to Consul-General Pratt and summarizes the promises 
which had been made by our sole representative there to those 
people and to the leaders of those people. Secretary Day says, in 
substance, "Your reports to us disclose an understanding on the 
part of Aguinaldo and the Filipino people that our object there, 
the object of the cooperation between them and us, is to achieve 
their independence." 

A delegation of Filipino people called on Consul-General Pratt, 
at Singapore, and delivered an address on the 9th of June. In 
response the consul-general, among other things, presented a flag 
to those people. In the address which the Filipino spokesman 

4325 



21 

made to our consul-general he said he hoped that this great na- 
tion, the American nation, would persevere in its policy of human- 
ity and in confirmation of the arrangement made between Pratt 
and Ag'uinaldo on the 26th day of April. Pratt responded, and, 
among other things, presenting an American Hag, he said: 

The red stripes are the emblem of the blood shed by our ancestors for 
freedom and independence, as you Filipino people are shedding yo-ar blood. 
The white signifies the purity of motive, the blue the azure sky, the stars 
the equality of the independent States constituting the Republic. Take it 
and keep it as a souvenir of this occasion. 

That was promptly communicated to the Administration, and 
has been sent to Congress w^ith the sanction of the President of 
the United States. 

General Anderson refers to an incident which is of peculiar 

significance. I read what he says: 

About the middle of July the insurgent leaders in Cavite invited a num- 
ber of our Army and ISFavy ofi&cers to a banquet. There was some postpran- 
dial speech making, the substance of the Filipino talk being that they wished 
to be annexed, but not conquered. One of our officers in reply assured them 
that we had come not to make them slaves, but to make them free men. A 
singular scene followed. All the Filipinos rose to their feet, and Buencomeno, 
taking his wineglass in his hand, said: "We wish to be baptized in that sen- 
timent." Then he, and the rest poured the Avine from their glasses over 
their heads. 

Prior to July 1 these people had made a formal declaration of 
their independence; they had organized a provisional government; 
Aguinaldo had issued a proclamation, which Wildman says he 
helped him to prepare to this end in Hongkong before his depar- 
ture. 

Mr. President, such were the circumstances which General 
Anderson says gave those people the riglit to believe, and they did 
believe, that the end of all this was to be their freedom and inde- 
pendence. It would be unfair to say that the Administration was 
proceeding in matters of such serious consequence as this v/ithout 
consideration of the facts. It is fair to presume that the Admin- 
istration knew these things which the consular officers reported 
officially to the authorities at Washington. 

Secretary Day telegraphed both to Pratt and to Wildman not 
to make unauthorized representations to the Filipinos. That was 
well enough; but the Filipino people had been relying upon these 
promises, and it was the duty of the Administration, if it wished 
to repudiate them, to bring notice to those who were concerned of 
the repudiation. There was no one more naturally to whom such 
a notice might be given than the commander of our first expedi- 
tionary forces that landed there; and yet Anderson tells us that 
he bad no instructions; that he had no authority to speak one way 
or the other upon the question. The first question propounded to 
him by Aguinaldo, he says, was: " Had the United States recog- 
nized or would the United States recognize his government? " In 
either form, he says, it was embarrassing, because he had been 
given no authority to speak. 

General Merritt was invited by Aguinaldo by letter to speak as 
to what the purposes and intentions of the Government of the 
United States were. General Merritt, when he arrived in the latter 
part of July, took control. Why was it that he was not given defi- 
nite instructions to repudiate the pledges and promises w^hich our 
consular representatives had made to those people, and which had 
been officially communicated to the President? But when Agui- 
naldo and the Filipino people asked Merritt what our purpose 
was, he says, "I have no authority to speak;" but he went one 



22 

step farther, and he said, '*! think you can rely upon the good 
faith of the United States." 

Let us proceed in this line a little further. We have seen that 
pledges were made, that their repudiation was never brought home 
to the Filipino people, or to their leaders. They were permitted 
to go on sacrificing their lives in a struggle which this nation of 
ours knew was for the purpose of achieving their own independ- 
ence and self-government. Manila was captured. Aguinaldo and 
those acting with him, his associates, obtained possession not only 
of Luzon, but of all or almost all the other islands of the archi- 
pelago.- I read what General Anderson says on that subject. He 
says: 

We— 

That is, the American forces — 

We held Manila and Cavite. The rest of the island was held, not by the 
Spaniards, but by the Filipinos. On the other islands the Spaniards were 
confined to two or three fortified towns. At the time referred to we could 
not claim to hold by purchase, for we had not then received Spain's quit 
claim deed to the archipelago. Making allowance for difference of time, we- 
took Manila almost to the hour when the peace preliminaries were signed in 
Washington. 

The same thing is corroborated by G-eneral Merritt. I next re- 
fer to a statement by General Otis. On page 76 of General Otis's 
report he uses this language: 

And thus, in December, 1898, we find in northern and southeastern Luzon, 
in Mindoro, Simar, Leyte, Panay, and even on the coast of Mindanao and in 
some of the smaller islands, the aggressive Tagalo, present in person, and, 
whether civilian or soldier, supreme in authority. The success which at- 
tended the political efforts of Aguinaldo and his close associates and gave them 
such sudden and unexpected power was not calculated to induce them to 
accept subordinate positions in a reestablished government, and the original 
premeditated intention to control supremely at least a portion of the Filipino 
people had become firmly fixed. The cry for liberty and independence was 
everywhere being raised. 

I next refer to page 94 of the same report, where General Otis 

says: 

General Aguinaldo was now at the zenith of his power. He had recently 
suppressed rebellion which had raised its head in central Luzon. He had as- 
sembled a pliant congress, many members of which had been appointed by 
him to represent far-distant congressional districts, and which had voted him 
the dictator of the lives and fortunes of all the inhabitants of the Philippines. 
He dominated Manila, and when he ordered that the birthday of the mar- 
tyred Sizal should be appropriately observed there, business was paralyzed 
and not a native dared to pursue his accustomed daily labors. Not a prov- 
ince had the courage to oppose his appointed governors, backed by their 
Tagalo guards, although a few of those governors had previously sufi;ered 
martyrdom for the zeal exhibited in collecting money and sequestering pri- 
vate property. The southern islands were obedient. 

Thus in this last statement not only Aguinaldo and his govern- 
ment were everywhere, even dominated the city of Manila. 

What further occurred? The authority of Spain had been com- 
pletely destroyed in those islands beyond all possibility of restora- 
tion. General Greene said in a report made August 27, 1898—1 
read from page 374, Senate Document 62 — 

The Spanish Government is completely demoralized, and Spanish power 
i? dead beyond possibility of resurrection. Spain would be unable to govern 
these islands if we surrendered them. 

General Merritt says in his testimony given before the Peace 
Commission at Paris, found on page 369, in answer to a question 
propounded by Mr. Gray. I will first read the question. It is as 
follows: 

Mr. Gray. Suppose by final treaty with Spain we should abandon Luzon 
and all the Philippines, exacting such terms and conditions and guaranties 

4235 



1 



23 

as we sliould think aecessary, and abandon them entirely, reserving only a 
coaling station, perhaps; what do yon think they would do about it?" 

General Merrttt. I think in the island of Luzon they would fight to the 
bitter end. 1 have talked with a number of them, intelligent men, who said 
their lives were nothing to them as compared with the freedom of the coun- 
try, getting rid of Spanish government. 

Mr. Davis. Do you think Spain would be able to reduce them? 

General Merritt. No, sir. 

I read further from General Merritt. This question was pro- 
pounded by Mr. Davis and is to be found on page ^68: 

Mr. Davis. Suppose the United States, by virtue of a treaty with Spain, 
should take Luzon, all the Philippines, or a part, by virtue of a treaty, pay- 
ing no attention to the insurgents, how would that be taken by Aguinaldo? 

General Merritt. I think Aguinaldo and his immediate following woiild 
resist it, but whether he could resist to any extent I do not know, because 
his forces are divided. 

Thus, Mr. President, General Merritt informed our peace com- 
missioners at Paris that to do what they afterwards did would 
necessarily bring war in those islands. 

Mr. Frye, the distinguished presiding officer of the Senate, 
when he was in Paris, evidently had in mind that there had been 
an alliance between the United States and the Filipino people in 
the struggle against Spain. I read from page 488 the following: 

Mr. Frye. I would like to ask just one question in that line. Suppose 
the United States in the progress of that war found the leader of the present 
Philippine rebellion an exile from his country in Hongkong and seiit for him 
and brought him to the islands in an American ship, and then furnished him 
4,000 or 5,000 stands of arms, and allowed him to purchase as many more stands 
of arms in Hongkong, and accepted his aid in conquering Luzon, what kind 
of a nation, in the eyes of the world, would we appear to be to sui'i'ender 
Aguinaldo and his insurgents to Spain to be dealt with as they please? 

A. We become responsible for everything he has done; he is our ally, and 
we are bound to protect him. 

Mr. President, I next read from a report made by Major Bell, 
who is most highly commended by General Merritt, who has ren- 
dered very distinguished service in the United States Army in the 
Philippine Islands, and whose veracity will scarcely be doubted, 
who made, by official direction, a special investigation of the con- 
ditions of the Filipino people immediately after the arrival of the 
first expeditionary forces, about the 1st of July. He says: 

There is not a particle of doubt but what Aguinaldo and his leaders will 
resist any attempt of any govern naent to reorganize a colonial government 
here. They are especially bitter toward the Spaniards, but equally deter- 
mined not to submit any longer to being a colony of any other government. 

Mr. President, these are some of the witnesses whom I call, wit- 
nesses whose standing and authority can not be questioned, wit- 
nesses who were entitled to speak upon this subject, most of them 
witnesses of the transactions of which they give account. They 
have official sanction, and they inform us that these things existed, 
and they can not be disputed. 

I desire to render every presumption in favor of right conduct 
of this Government and all those who may represent it. I do not 
desire to infer anything which is notreasonable — not inevitable. I 
would draw no conclusion which does not seem to me to be im- 
perative; but now, in all candor I ask, Mr. President, whether, in 
looking back over the past transactions for the last two years, we 
have dealt openly, frankly, honorably, and justly with those 
people? 

I am willing to make all necessary allowances to the President 
and to any particular officer; the multitude of duties which they 
have to perform distract their attention. I am willing to concede, 
for the purposes of what I have to say, that the President of the 
United States did not become fully conscious of the actual state 

4225 



24 

of affairs across the ocean in that far-distant land. That is not 
the question which I desire to raise; but I do take an account of 
those past things — although Senators say we ought not to do so — 
because it is only by taking into account the things which have 
passed that we may accurately be able to determine the things of 
the present and be able to judge what is best to do for the future. 

These facts, first, the aspiration and expectation of independent 
government on the part of the Filipino people, under the leader- 
ship of Aguinaldo; second, knowledge of this Government that 
such was their expectation; third, inducements held out to them, 
by our representatives, whether directly authorized or not, that 
that expectation would not be disappointed; fourth, the infor- 
mation which our own officers, after investigation, gave to us 
ofi&cially that to undertake to disappoint that expectation would 
lead to bloodshed and war, by Bell and Anderson, and reiterated 
by Otis — while we understood these facts and that such would be 
the result, we demanded of Spain the cession of absolute sover- 
eignty over a territory of which she had irretrievably lost posses- 
sion, not a foot of which was under her control. 

We demanded the cession of her so-called sovereignty to the 
United States, for which we paid to her $20,000,000. That fatal 
step was taken (because it was a fatal step, and no man can dis- 
pute it) with the full knowledge of the facts communicated to 
those who were responsible for it that it meant inevitably a con- 
flict of arms with the Filipinos, who had been led by our repre- 
sentatives across the water to cooperate and aid us in our war 
against Spain with the expected compensation of being able there- 
by to achieve their own freedom and establish their own self- 
government and rule their own destinies. 

Those who support the policy of the Administration say we 
must deal with the present. The proposition of the Senator from 
Massachusetts is that all-sufficient is the evil of the day. He does 
not want to gTope forward and find more evils by probing into 
the future. He wants us to take no account of the past, and I 
agree with him in a measure that the situation of man as ex- 
pressed by Burke is the preceptor of his duty, but he can not per- 
form his duty unless he looks around him, behind him, and into 
the future so far as his limited vision may extend. 

Whence did this war come? Where will it end? Whither will 
it lead, Mr. President? Anderson and Otis tell us why it came. 
Merritt and Bell told our peace commissioners what would bring 
it about. Knowing that, we did that which they said would and 
which did bring it about. Mr. President, it was not a freak of 
chance, a child of destiny. It was not an act of Providence. 
When the message was sent across the water to Dewey wanting 
to know which would be the most valuable of those islands for us 
to take, the answer came back; and the distinguished Senator from 
Minnesota [Mr. Davis] , a member of the commission, asked Gen- 
eral Merritt whether, if we would take this and ignore those 
people, the native inhabitants would fight. Merritt said "They 
will fight." 

Mr. President, every nation is endowed with the power of ra- 
tional volition, and it must suffer the penalty of the failure to ex- 
ercise it. I am not preiDared to concede the contention, discredit- 
able as it is to the Administration, that the events in the past 
have been mere freaks of chance, the Executive Mansion of my 
country, like the kingly palace of George the Third, an irresponsi- 
ble madhouse. The President is an able man, courteous in all his 

4325 



25 

dealings, and I will do him no injustice. He is able to comprehend 
facts when they are laid before him. He can trace consequences 
undoubtedly from causes. He was advised of the situation. He 
acted deliberately, whether of his own motion or by the power 
which controlled him. For what he did he is responsible. It is 
in the essence of our institutions that those elected and placed in 
important positions in our Government must be responsible. If 
they do not want to take the responsibility of their official conduct, 
they should not aspire to positions of responsibility. 

This war, Mr, President, came because of our promise, in what- 
ever way it was made, which led those people to have the firni 
conviction that all their fighting and all their sacrifice of life were 
to end, through our aid to them, in their independence, and which 
was turned to ashes upon their lips. That disappointment, which 
came from the proposition embodied in the proclamation framed 
by the President and issued on the 9th day of January, was the 
inception of this war. They responded to it virtually by a declara- 
tion of war, as General Otis has told us in his report. 

Mr. President, what is the nature of our title? What is the 
present status of the Philippine Archipelago? I should like some 
Senators who have viewed this case from the standpoint of the 
permanent retention of the islands and the theory maintained by 
the Administration, as I understand it, what they think our status 
is. Kent says a treaty alone does not operate to transfer sover- 
eignty without actual delivery of possession. An authority upon 
international law says that sovereignty over a people can not be 
transferred without the consent of the governed. The same au- 
thority says that a treaty of cession — and that, of course, is a self- 
evident proposition— only operates to transfer just such dominion, 
and no more, as the ceding power possesses. All official reports 
say that Spain had nothing; the Filipino people had declared their 
independence and fought for it and had achieved it. It was a fact 
accomplished before the lOth day of December, the date of the 
treaty. 

Aguinaldo and his government, whatever it was — and I am not 
talking about whether it was a government like that of Germany 
or Russia, or that of the Sultan of Turkey, or of some South Ameri- 
can republic — that government, whatever it was, and however in- 
adequate and unjust in our view of things we may say it was, had 
control of all the islands and dominated even Manila. Spain had 
lost everything beyond all power of recovery if we had not taken 
the cession from her, if we are to believe Merritt and Greene and 
Otis and people who are competent to speak by reason of their 
knowledge of the situation. On the 10th of December, when the 
treaty was made, the President himself, in a proclamation which 
he issued, I believe dated the 23d of December, gave direction to 
extend the military authority to every part of the islands which 
we did not have. If possession, actual delivery of cession, is essen- 
tial to sovereignty over a people, then we have not yet dominion. 
Spain delivered to us what she had, which would be properly 
represented by zero. Our sovereignty to that attached, whatever 
it was. 

Nations in their international relations, according to a low stand- 
ard, expressed by some writers upon international law, are in a 
state of lawlessness. Then nothing is right which can not be en- 
forced; nothing is wrong which can not be punished. If a nation 
is strong enough, it can wage war and subjugate and assert its 
authority over any land and any people, according to its own sweet 

4235 



26 

will. Of course in that sense the United States had the right, ac- 
cording to that debased and sordid standard, although it acquired 
nothing by purchase and transfer of Spain, because she had noth- 
ing to transfer, because we were powerful and those people feeble, 
to send our Army there in sufficient force to coerce obedience or 
cause extermination. But when we inaugurated that campaign, 
not of peace but of war, we inaugurated it upon a basis which in 
justice and morality can not be defended by any right-thinking 
man. 

1 state, in the first place, Mr. President, that these people are 
not rebels. They have never acknowledged allegiance to the 
United States, and that is a prerequisite to rebellion. Breach of 
the solemn pledge made to uphold the laws of a country is in- 
volved in the charge of rebellion. They are but a belligerent peo- 
ple, fighting in self-defense against a war of subjugation waged 
by us against them. When will that war end? I do not know 
whether the Senator from Wisconsin intends that his bill shall 
take effect next year or whether he expects it to take effect during 
our lifetime or three hundred years hence, when all insurrection 
in those islands is com^pletely destroyed. Then, and then only, is 
this bill to take effect. 

In the argument made by our peace commissioners in Paris to 
the representatives of Spain in trying to negotiate this treaty it 
was said that these people had been in continuous rebellion against 
Spanish authority for more than three hundred years. Spain's 
commissioners answered by saying, "That is true, and here are the 
sacrifices which we have made against our own welfare." Men 
who have been there, distinguished officers whose letters I have 
read, say that the war is not ended, and that in their opinion it 
will never end. So, perhaps the Senator from Wisconsin really 
intends to content himself with recognition that a state of hostili- 
ties does exist there, and never expects the bill otherwise to go 
into operation 

Mr. SPOONER. Vf ill the Senator from Utah permit me? 

Mr. RAWLINS. Certainly. 

Mr. SPOONER. I think the Senator expressly consented to a 
state of hostilities over there long, long ago, when he voted, with 
full knowledge of the purpose, to increase the Army at the last 
session of Congress, knowing that that increase was for the pur- 
pose of enabling the President to send troops to be employed as 
they have been employed. Am I wrong about that? 

Mr. RAWLINS. I stated in the beginning that there had been 
no direct and express recognition of a state of hostilities. A 
proposition to relieve temporarily the men whose terms of enlist- 
ment had expired was before Congress. They were to be retained 
there unless their places could be supplied by enlistments made 
by increase of the Regular Army. We voted for that increase. 
That, in my judgment, was not any more a declaration of war 
against the people of the Philippine Islands than it was a declara- 
tion of war against the people of Cuba, because a large share of 
that Army, it was then known, would go to Cuba to aid in the 
preservation of order. It was no more a war against the Filipino 
people than it was against any other nation with whom we might 
be at peace. 

Mr. SPOONER. Will the Senator permit me? 

Mr. RAWLINS. Certainly. 

Mr. SPOONER. The Senator apprehended, did he not, when 
the Army bill was before Congress and he voted for it, that a large 

4225 



27 

portion of those troops provided for were to be sent to the Philip- 
pines? Did he suppose they were to be sent there for a picnic or a 
fight? They were, of course, to relieve troops whose terms had 
expired, but the supply of men provided by that bill was vastly in 
excess of that requirement. Will the Senator say that he did not 
expect those troops to be employed in military operations in the 
Philippines? And if it was a vile and outrageous crime against 
liberty, I do not know how the Senator finds justification for his 
vote in favor of that bill. 

The Senator from Massachusetts, stating here upon the floor in 
open Senate that those troops were to be employed against the 
Filipinos and his unwillingness that they should be employed, 
registered his vote against it. The Senator will permit me, and 
I only take advantage of this occasion inasmuch as he mentioned 
me, because I sat before him, but I am unable to discover upon 
what theory of justice it is that the Senate and House of Repre- 
sentatives can raise an army by solemn vote and then criticise 
the President for using it as they intended that he should and as 
they expected he would. 

Mr. RAWLINS. The Senator asks me whether I expected the 
Army would be used for a fight or for a frolic. I do not know 
what may have operated in my mind in that particular respect; 
whether I expected the Army would be used for a frolic or a fight 
or a foot race; but I do remember distinctly the circumstances 
under which that measure came before Congress. I do remember 
that the venerable chairman of the Committee on Military Affairs 
made a statement of the situation, and in that statement — I 
believe it was in the month of February, just prior to the adjourn- 
ment — he pointed out the fact that the terms of enlistment of the 
regulars and of the volunteers proper would expire the moment 
the ratifications of the treaty with Spain were exchanged, and that 
the President of the United States, after that event had been pro- 
claimed, would not think for one moment of ordering those vol- 
unteers into the trenches; that that army was then in that far- 
distant land and hostilities had been provoked; that the lives of 
those volunteers and others in that island, by reason of the acts 
which had already taken place, unless sufficient force was main- 
tained there, would be in peril. 

We were informed that it was necessary as a matter of self^ 
defense, to save the lives of our volunteers, that men should be sent 
over there; and I do not know whether I voted for that measure 
or not, but if I did vote for it I voted for it for that reason. Since 
I cast that vote I have gone more in detail and have been able to 
ascertain more fully the facts bearing upon the situation, and I 
am free to say that 1 do not regret that 1 did cast that vote, because 
in spite of the measure which we then passed, the authority which 
we gave to the President to raise additional troops, those volun- 
teers were ordered into the trenches after the terms of their 
enlistment had expired. 

The Senator insinuates that I say that those acts over there by 
the soldiers were unholy and cruel and wicked. I said no such 
thing. 

Mr. SPOONER. I did not say that. I spoke of what you called 
the war upon that people. I beg the Senator to be just. I did not 
impute to the Senator any observation or criticism of any act of 
the soldiers over there. Pie must know that. My observation was 
elicited entirely by ttie question which the Senator put to me as 
to whether there was not a subtle purpose in a line of this bill to 

4325 



28 

recognize the existence of iiostilities over there; and I rose simply 
to call the attention of the Senator to the fact that the existence 
of hostilities over there was recognized long ago, not only by Con- 
gress but by the Senator when the Army bill was passed. That 
is all. 

Mr. RAWLINS. Whatever implication there might be as to 
the votes which were cast for that Army bill , I have already suffi- 
ciently answered it. The Senator did say and wanted to know 
how I could cast my vote for that bill if I then believed that those 
soldiers who were thus to be raised were to be employed in a cruel, 
ruthless, unholy war. I say that I had no right to believe, had 
no right to expect, from the information which we then jpossessed, 
that the President of the United States would employ any part of 
this army in a cruel, unwarranted, and remorseless war. I have 
never yet charged that the President intended to do that . But 
what I did say is that we demanded the cession of those islands 
from Spain to the United States— we did not do it; but the Presi- 
dent and his commissioners were informed by Merritt, by Bell, 
and others that the result of that transaction would inevitably 
mean war, and that as a consequence of that, our troops being- 
over there, war was precipitated. 

Whose fault it was I do not care now to inquire. Who fired 
the first gun I do not care to inquire about. The situation was at 
the time that bill was before Congress that there was armed con- 
flict between forces over there, and that to save the lives of our 
men they undoubtedly had to act at that time in self-defense. I 
did not imply by my action then that this army should be affirma- 
tively and aggressively used for the extermination of that people 
or to wage a remorseless, unholy, and cruel war. I do not make 
that charge now, but 1 did vote, and I would perhaps vote again 
under similar circumstances, for sending soldiers to any place 
where American citizens or American soldiers might be, to be 
employed in defense of their lives. 

Mr. President, whatever may come of this war, certain it is that 
it has made plain to the world the sterling stuff of the American 
volunteer. No propitious climate invited him to the contest. 
The jungles did not open to make for him a pathway, nor did the 
water divide in order that he might pass over dry-shod. He was 
not faced by a foeman worthy of his steel. He could not have 
been inspired by the enthusiasm or actuated by the spirit which 
prompted him to enter the service of his country for the sake of 
humanity. Never did conditions, moral or physical , more adverse 
confront human soldiery; and yet these men never faltered. Day 
after day, hour after hour, both night and day, they added glory 
to glory, triumph to triumph. The maxim of the soldier is, ''My 
country; may she ever be right; but right or wrong, my country." 
The maxim which ought to animate statesmen and lawmakers is, 
" My country; to continue her in the right; but if in the wrong, to 
help set her right. " That is the answer which I make to the state- 
ment of the Senator. 

Now, Mr. President, this proposition involves another consider- 
tion of far-reaching importance. I have said that I am opposed 
to this programme because, in my opinion, it does not look for- 
ward, but carries us backwai'd to'the scenes of despotism. When 
I speak I speak without impugning the motive of anyone. I am 
an expansionist. I believe in it by natural and peaceful processes. 
The progress of our people is natural and inevitable. An artificial 
barrier can not be set to that progress. I make no question of 

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that kind. But here is a question involved which is of very 
deep and very great importance — the question involved in the sale 
and transfer of vast numbers of people. 

Mr. President, the density of population of the Philippine Archi- 
pelago is twice as great as that in Illinois or in Indiana. It is 
twenty or thirty times ?.s great as the territory west of the Missis- 
sippi, between the Mississippi and the Pacific Ocean. It is teem- 
ing with people. There is no vacant territory there. There is 
nothing there upon which Americans can build homes. 

On the other hand, upon this side of the shores of the Pacific 
there are undeveloped resources. There are riches beyond all 
comprehension which need only the application of capital and the 
touch of industry to develop. We can well afford to open more 
tunnels and sink more shafts to touch the inestimable treasures of 
mineral which lie everywhere throughout that vast section of 
country. We have but to husband its waters and reclaim the 
arid wastes and build sugar factories. Those things-^ will give 
employment to labor and build homes for the American people. 

Mr. President, there is no such resource in the Philippine Archi- 
pelago. On the contrary, for three hundred years scarcely enough 
people from other nations have been going there to be worth men- 
tioning. A few thousand and you have told the whole story; 100,- 
000 Chinamen, and the mixture and combination of races which 
was depicted by the junior Senator from Massachusetts. 

But we are repeating history, Mr. President. More than one 
hundred years ago, just prior to the time when this G-overnment 
of ours was established, Great Britain set out on a programme some- 
what similar to that, and I want to read briefly a description of 
that policy which is not dissimilar to that which is now iDresented 
for our consideration. I read a description of it as given on page 
449 of the Works of Edmund Burke, Volame II. Speaking with 
reference to Great Britain in its relation to India, he said: 

The next sale was that of the whole nation of the Rohillas, which the grand 
salesman, without a pretense of quarrel, and contrary to his own declared 
sense of duty and rectitude, sold to the same Sujahlul Dowlah. He sold the 
people to utter extirpation for the sum of £400,000. Faithfully was the bai*- 
gain performed on our side. Hafiz Rhamet, the most eminent of their chiefs, 
one of the bravest men of his time, and as famous throughout the East for 
the elegance of his literature and the spirit of his poetical compositions (by 
which he supported the name of Hafiz) as for his courage, was invaded with 
an army of an hundred thousand men and an English brigade. 

This man, at the head of inferior forces, was slain valiantly fighting for 
his country. His head was cut off and delivered for money to a barbarian. 
His wife and children, persons of that rank, were seen begging a handful of 
rice through the English camp. The whole nation,, with inconsiderable ex- 
ceptions, was slaughtered or banished. The country was laid waste with 
fire and sword; and that land, distinguished above most others by the cheer- 
ful face of paternal government and protected labor, the chosen seat of culti- 
vation and plenty, is now almost throixghout a dreary desert, covered with 
rushes, and briers, and jungles full of wild beasts. 

The Bi'itish officer who commanded in the delivery of the people thus sold 
felt some compunction at his employment. He represented these enormous 
excesses to the president of Bengal, for which ho received a sevei'o repri- 
mand from the civil governor. 

Further, other transactions in which people were sold are here 
given: 

In Bengal, Sura.iah Dowlah was sold to Mir Jaffier, Mir Jaffier was sold to 
Mir Cossim, and Mir Cossim was sold to Mir Jaffier again. 

And so on, giving a large number. 

All these bargains and sales were regularly attended with the waste a,ndl 
havoc of the country— always by the buyer, and sometimes by the object c£ 
the sale. 

43.35 



30 

Mr, President, by reason of these examples, these frightful con- 
sequences of undertaking to make the destinies of millions of peo- 
ple depend upon transactions of barter and sale— the frightful 
consequences flowing over that have, according to the author on 
international law that I have cited, led in modern times to the 
well- settled principle founded upon intrinsic justice and, sound 
morality that such things can not lawfully and morally be done 
in accordance with the principles of international law except with 
the consent of the governed. We are having repeated now at this, 
the end of the nineteenth century, the experience which came to 
Great Britain at the end of the last century, and which has made 
her rule in India a blight and curse to all its people. 

Mr. President, the Senator from Massachusetts claims that, con- 
ceding everything else, these islands would be of great benefit to 
us commercially. He said, as P^understood him, that by reason 
of our possession of those islands our diplomatic officers were 
enabled to obtain the open door to China, and the Senator paid a 
glowing eulogy to the present Secretary of State, pointing to that 
as being a grand consummation of his diplomatic skill. 

Mr. President, I can not regard it as does the Senator from 
Massachusetts. It seems to me to be a triumph of English and 
not of American diplomacy. The policy of free trade at home 
and free trade everywhere has been the policy of Great Britain. 
In the open door in China, Great Britain and Germany and Russia 
have no sympathy with the myriads of people in that vast Empire. 
That sovereignty, if it pleases, in accordance with every principle 
of justice and international law, is entitled to have a tariff barrier 
around her shores, or she is entitled to tear it down, as in accord- 
ance with her own interest she may think proper and best. But 
what right has Russia, what right has a great trust of nations 
like Russia, Great Britain, and Germany, to say we will form a 
conspiracy and say to the Emperor of China and those people: 
" Obey our behests and tear down your tariff wall? " 

It is a precedent to which I can not give my sanction, worthless 
though that may be. I can not give my sanction that this coun- 
try shall enter into a combination and conspiracy to dictate to 
other and feebler nations, as the result of the gigantic power of a 
combination or a trust of nations, that their right to control their 
own affairs and levy their own taxes to subserve their own inter- 
ests they shall not possess. 

Mr. President, this is not the triumph of American policy. This 
is the triumph of British policj^ England and Germany have 
given us nothing and can give us nothing morally in China. They 
can not give us freer access to any parts of the markets of tliat 
vast number of people. They give us nothing; but if we recog- 
nize the Philippine Archipelago as a part of our territory, they 
have by their combination, their spheres of influence over the 
diplomatic representatives of the United States, laid down the 
position that we are to take down our tarifl' barrier — tear it down 
to the ocean level. 

Mr. President, if we keep the Philippines we are to add the ex- 
pense of a vast army which for an untold length of time in the 
future must be kept there on police duty at least. If we are to be- 
lieve the statements made by the proponents of the iDolicy, which 
is now under consideration, they are to exercise police patrol, 
protecting Aguinaldo from Artacho or Artacho from Aguinaldo. 
The burden of the expense of all this to fall upon the taxpayers of 
the United States. 

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31 

Our merchants and our traders and onr proa 
pete in those, islands, and for that market wii. 
merchants a nd producers of Great Britain, of Ruo^ 
and of all ot her countries. They get the benefit ana 
That is the sum. of that transaction, if it is to he carrieu 

It is similar to that other matchless achievement of 
matic skill of our Secretary of State, the Hay-Pauncei 
In that cafse we are graciously accorded by Great Brita 
European^ nations the right to construct and maintain ti 
at our own expense and principally for the benefit of Grea' 

Mr. Pi'esident, these are all departures from the grf 
principles and policy and traditions of our Governm 
see nothing, so far as commerce or money making is c.__^c- 
invite us to go on with this policy which is outlined for us. 
think i t is detrimental and destructive of ail our best interet 
materirJ; I think it is destructh e of all our beat interests sociai 
and political. 

The distinguished Senator from Massachusetts likened himself, 
as did Sir Isaac Newton, another distinguished philosopher whom 
he did not name, to a little child playing upon the seashore, now 
and then diverting himself by finding a brighter pebble than ordi- 
nary, w'nile the great ocean of truth lay unexplored before him. 

Mr. I^resideut, when I read over that speech, three hours long, 
I could not conceive how the Senator thought he was not perfectly 
familiar with all that is in the air, and all that is upon the land, 
and all that is in the sea. I believe actually if the Senator should 
stand up(Dn the seashore and think about the situation, he would 
come to the conclusion that he could make an improvement upon 
the handiwork of the Almighty. I think he would conclude that 
he could dictate and prescribe better laws to control the life of the 
finny shoals of the mighty deep, and I think he might come to the 
conclusion that if in prescribing those regulations there should be 
any disturbance, the explosion of a stick of giant powder in the 
midst of the finny tribes would calm their fretful, finny souls. 

Mr. President, as I read that speech and as I heard part of it, 
the Senator seemed to me like a man standing upon the housetop 
ready to hurl a deadly missile into a crowded thoroughfare, reck- 
less of all consequence. He says that certain races have an in- 
eradicable tendency to favor despotism. I believe the Senator 
takes pride in the fact that a few years ago he was the author of 
the force bill. More than a third of his speech was devoted to 
the pulverization of the keystone in the arch of liberty. He 
wants to cut loose from the Constitution, if I understood him 
rightly, and govern many millions of people without their consent. 

He wants to know where the principle of the consent of the 
governed begins to operate. He says if it is sacred to all, it must 
be sacred to one; and he wants to know at what point in the cen- 
sus the principle begins to operate. If it does not operate with 
one, it can not operate with 30,000. If it can not operate with 
30,000, it can not operate as to 10,000,000; and if not as to 10,000,000, 
then it can not operate as to 100,000,000. Thus he strikes away 
the foundation upon which our free institutions rest. He goes 
back to the principle of the Holy Alliance, and by his logic lands 
dangerously near the divine right of kings to rule people without 
their consent. 

Ah, Mr. President, the Senator says that all born east of Con- 
stantinople have an ineradicable, a racial tendency to despotism. 
If we are to believe what he says, he must have had his birth east 
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32 

^ / livirig example of the incorrectness of 

ic. /ou catch a Hottentot you.ng enough to 

. a process of education you may malie out of him 

.. lit, I can not see how the Anglo-Saxon or the Cau- 

s any right to obtrude a despotic sway over the Asiatic 

ay. No more could I see how some great mogul of Asia 

nd, as they attempted to do in the middle ages, a des- 

y over the Caucasian. i 

<fsr.s Emerson, has its scale of degrees, but it is clifficult to 

■^_^v degree that is positive. It is beyond th& purview 

^ ^c of mortals to say that any particular degrt^e or con- 

9iS the proper one, and that all men must coiaform to 

-. J liie may become like the surface of a tranquil ocean. The 

.s^ ideal of j.appiness of one man may, on the contrary, differ 

■ rom that of another equally intelligent, and how much more is 

<:hat true of races. 

The peasant is pleased to follow the plow; the sailor, to j/low the 
main with his bark; the soldier, to yield obedience to 3.iis com- 
mander and 3 ush unconsciously upon the pointed steel; the shep- 
herd, to recline upon some eminence and cast his sluggish eyes 
upoT his QTaziig herds; the smith delights to forge the metal and 
see hecume p'astic in his hands; the heathen thinks he can read 
in puny relics o.'' wood and stone the divine essence of the gods, 
and delights to supplicate that he may participate in the joys of 
some blissful realm delineated by the pencil of his own imagina- 
tion. 

Every Christian has his own peculiar ideas concerning present 
anc. e^^^nal harpiness. The fact is that no two men, no two 
r«ces nk alike, reason alike, or hope alike. The thoughts and 
hoppp: of men are suggested by the scenes they view, the air they 
breathe, the land they dwell upon. 
Mr. President, we can not rule Asiatic peoples to their advaii- 
^^ d ^ it'iout detriment to ourselves. Nature revolts at the 
iaea. Hence I say that to carry out this policy is destructive of 
the best interests, material, moral, social, and political, of both 
tne people of the United States and the people of the Philippine 
Islands. 

These words may fall on deaf ears. A fatal fascination for 
power may prevail. 

The time flies of imperialism flutter their dilletante wings in 
in wild delight at every panegyric of power, at every fulsome adu- 
lation of those who have gifts to bestow and patronage to dis- 
pense. And so it has ever been. 

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